Poetry by Clarence Allan Ebert
Chilled dusk shrouds the afternoon warmth. The sunset’s
pretty purpose draped in blue-haze. Night is coming on fast.
A firecracker bursts in the mouth of a frog. Shy stars crawl
out & realign their constellations. Water spirals down a polished
drain, pink with fresh blood. Curiosity cakes dry mud on loose
laces. Western clouds shaped like brains twin-mingle around
the chimney’s billow. Wafting through the boy’s flared nostrils
the ticklish smoke of parched brick. Peach-colored petals spoking
from a gerbera’s heart, droop under crystal dew. Blind
nightcrawlers slither desperate for longer lifetimes
beyond the flashlight’s halo. In dawn’s first amber wink
on the juniper and spruce the boy’s bait is hooked, a coffee can
of worms in hand. Wading from reed-bank to muddy pond, every
freckle on his cheek praying for another hot breath of sunshine.
His fishing rod in hand, he tosses the line. He’s a brave sum of all
his skinny parts, patient, though his heart’s on fire, anxious
for the bobber’s bob on the still black water. Here, where he caught
a twenty-four-inch bluegill worthy of a tale he’d tell.
Clarence Allan Ebert lives in Silver Spring, Md. He first published a poem in 1978 and since then hasn’t sat at the old oak writing desk in the parlor because he raised four children and spent his time litigating matters. Since COVID, he’s back in the parlor, writing away.
